Wednesday, August 15- Tuesday August 16

by jgshort@aol.com · August 16, 2018

We got to Bad River Bay anchorage and again saw Aurora and Hallelujah. This anchorage is known for it’s fishing and for riding your dinghies over the Rapids. This is a great place to explore on kayaks and dinghies. The first afternoon we had people over to our boat for docktails.

This was a great anchorage. The rock walls were really high on one side of it. You would think that it would be very protected. We had just got back to our boat and Aurora and Hallelujah were still out in little boats. Suddenly, I noticed that little waves were forming in a circular pattern on the water next to a sailboat a very short distance from our boat. I could feel some breeze moving around. As I watched, this circular pattern on the water started to move over toward Aurora and Hallelujah. When it got there, both boats started to move toward each other. In other words, it was kind of like a cyclone and instead of pushing the boats in the same direction (which keeps the boats away from each other on their anchor chains), it had one boat moving one direction and the other boat moving in the opposite direction. The net result was that the boat came very close to hitting each other. This was one of weirdest things that I have ever witnessed on the water. Oh, and the sun was out, no clouds around and not real wind. Later, talking with regular visitors to this anchorage we were told that this was common in this spot.

The water wasn’t running as fast as it usually does but we did manage to run up the rapids and then turn around and cruise down them. We stopped at a smaller rapids and went fishing. Pam caught 4 small mouth bass BUT we managed to lose 3 of them due to the lures coming untied or them squirming off the chain, so we let the only one that we really landed go. Oh well, it was fun catching them and we realized that we have a lot to learn about fishing.

The next morning we took our fishing poles out and ran the rapids. This was another boater.

Cruisers friends of our told us about this place. People have put rings into the rock to tie boats up along side of the rocks.

It sounds like a good idea but not without issues. This guy had to tape all openings like vents into the boat because mice and other critters come in at night. They learned the hard way. This boater spends about 6 weeks tied onto this spot. That is more than they should but nobody checks.